Preparing for rainfall nowcasting in the GOES-R era using SEVIRI and polar-orbiting microwave data over Africa

The Advanced Baseline Imager (ABI) onboard the Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite (GOES)-R platform will offer enhanced capabilities for satellite-based rainfall estimation and nowcasting over the current-generation GOES. The development of a rainfall nowcasting algorithm for GOES-R has relied extensively on proxy data from the Spinning Enhanced Infrared Visible Imager (SEVIRI) over Europe and Africa, since its 11 spectral bands are similar to bands that will be available on GOES-R. This rainfall nowcasting framework starts with estimates of current rain rate derived from visible and infrared data using an algorithm calibrated against rain rates from polar-orbiting microwave sensors. This current rain rate estimate and its immediate predecessor are analyzed using a K-Means feature detection technique to determine the motion of the identified precipitation features, and these motions are extrapolated forward in time to produce nowcasts of both accumulated 0-3 h future rainfall and the probability of measurable rainfall during the same time period. This paper describes the development of this algorithm framework.